Administration CommitteeFurther written evidence submitted by Susan Plimmer-Clark, Parliamentary Office Manager for Nicky Morgan MP

Here are some further points for your survey into the best arrangements for new offices, from my colleague in the Loughborough constituency office for Nicky Morgan MP.

The space for constituency work is rented from the local Conservative Association, which has a small office in a street in an urban residential part of the town. There is complete separation of the work, but some basic facilities are shared of course.

Immediately after the 2010 election, Nicky appointed her caseworker who was able to start by the end of that first month, but she did not have kit and she notes that it would be useful to be able to start a proper office operation for constituents rather quicker.

Here are her points for your consultation:

We took a room in the Association building and they happened to have a computer spare. I used this until about July when the Parliament one arrived. We would have been lost without that.

Similarly with phone lines, we took over the Association fax line which meant that we could advertise the number from Day 1. Ideally a phone line needs to be available immediately in all new constituency offices.

I either did not know about it, or it wasn’t available at the time, but instead of being given an email address and remote access, I didn’t get a Parliamentary email address until the PC arrived. I therefore used my own email address for a few months. As a consequence, I still receive emails every now and then from constituents on my personal email address.

PICT were at the time (and still are) always very helpful. We had some significant difficulties in getting the printer to talk to our computers in the constituency office and in the end we were dealt with by someone working for Hewlett Packard in India, but PICT kept in touch throughout to make sure all turned out well. The printer itself is superb (Hp Color LaserJet CM2320fxi MFP).

I understand that Parliament has a telecommunications agreement with Virgin, so our broadband is with them. I have BT at home in a village about two miles away from the office and it seems far quicker than Virgin. The speed of the Virgin line reduces a great deal during school holidays, on Friday afternoons and for some odd reason on Tuesday’s we regularly have a problem and have to switch off and on again.

We had a huge number of constituent cases at the beginning who had already been to the previous MP and came to Nicky for another try. We had no paperwork from the previous MP and had to start again in many cases. There will be data protection reasons for this, but if there is any way to address that for other constituencies in the future, it would be most helpful, mainly for the constituents themselves.

The benefits of a constituency database should be promoted from Day 1. I had worked for the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, so I set up an excel spreadsheet and filing system along their lines. It would have been impossible to keep track of all the cases without it. We now have CMITs which is excellent in many ways. They have let themselves down slightly by offering to make the system web based and then failing to do this, but the actual database is very user friendly and I wouldn’t be without it. It is equal to, if not better than the CAB system.

In addition to these points, I would like to say:

Members really need five PC’s and probably two laptops as a basic start up.

They need a database service, properly funded and IT supported and preferably universal in its supply to all offices. As of this morning, after 32 months in office, Nicky Morgan and her caseworkers have 2,910 cases.

24 January 2013